Development of flexibility in primary school students.

Abstract

Background: The flexibility development issue has not been studied well enough. Still, the problem can be partially solved in physical education lessons in a secondary school if a set of simple exercises for flexibility development is permanently added to the standard physical education (PE) program. The study aimed to increase flexibility in children aged 9-10 years in PE lessons.

Methods: The research was conducted in secondary school number 40 (Kirov, Russia). The study involved 56 children from 3^rd grade. Students were split into 2 groups of 28 children each. School children in each group were engaged in PE according to the school schedule 3 times a week for 40 minutes. The control group (CG) was engaged in the usual program and the children from the experimental group (EG) in the preparatory and final part of the lesson performed special sets of physical exercises to develop flexibility. To match the training volume, CG prolonged the usual program accordingly. The research used tests that determined mobility in the hip joint (forward tilt), the flexibility of the spine (exercise "bridge") and mobility in the shoulder joint (exercise "boat").

Results: For forward tilt performance, there was a significant difference in poststudy with EG resulting in higher performance than CG. Regarding post-to-pre research, EG and CG showed a significant difference with better values post compared with preintervention. Regarding the bridge test, a significant difference between groups was found regarding delta change with better performance for EG than CG. For post-to-preintervention comparisons, both EG and CG showed a significant difference with better values at post compared with prestudy. Concerning the boat test, EG resulted in higher performance than CG postintervention.

Conclusions: If a set of physical exercises is introduced in PE classes to develop flexibility in schoolchildren aged 9-10, then their indicators will significantly improve.